WORLD ROUNDUP: HAMAS ATTACKHamas’s Strategy of Failure | The Lessons Israel Failed to Learn from the Yom Kippur War | The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test, and more
· Hamas’s Strategy of Failure
Its attack on Israel is likely to set the group back and will prove especially devastating to ordinary Palestinians
· Modi’s Comments on Israel-Gaza War Signal Shift
Forthrightly expressing solidarity with Israel, India steps away from a long-held approach toward the Palestinians
· Why Chile’s Response to the Israel-Hamas War Stands Out
The country is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East
· Hamas and the Immorality of the “Decolonial” Intellectuals
Left-wing intellectual fads aligned with horrific terrorism do not belong in higher education
· What Was Hamas Thinking?
Unlike its previous encounters with Israel, Hamas may have unleashed an unlimited war that would culminate in the group’s utter destruction
· The Lessons Israel Failed to Learn from the Yom Kippur War
Gathering the right intelligence isn’t always enough
· The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test
The attack refutes the flawed assumption that all social-justice causes fit neatly together
Hamas’s Strategy of Failure (Daniel Byman, Foreign Policy)
Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel has destroyed the already-crumbling Israeli approach toward the Palestinians. But will it actually help Hamas?
Answering this question requires assessing what Hamas hoped to gain from its unprecedented attack. One goal of the attacks may have been to force an Israeli collapse — But in this, the attack appears to have backfired, at least for now. Israelis have come together in the face of the bloodshed—including with the emergency creation of a unity government—and reservists quickly assembled for what appears set to become one of Israel’s largest military operations in decades.
Another goal may have been to shatter Israeli domestic support for the occupation of Palestinian territories. The attacks both succeeded on this score and failed disastrously for what that realization means for Palestinians. On the one hand, no Israeli today can think that they can simply ignore the Palestinian issue: In this small country, everyone seems to have a family member or friend who is dead or wounded, and the coming military operation and reserve call-up involves huge parts of Israeli society. The attack also shattered any illusions about Israeli invincibility: The loss of life appears to be the largest of any single day in Israeli history.
On the other hand, the scale of the attacks and horrific nature of the violence will lead most Israelis to believe even more firmly in the idea that Palestinians cannot be trusted with self-rule.
Yet if the goal was to improve the situation in Gaza and demonstrate that Hamas can rule responsibly, that effort has failed disastrously. It will be hard even for Hamas allies such as Qatar and Turkey to portray the group as a responsible international actor. Many Israeli officials in the past negotiated with Hamas, seeing it as a necessary evil and preferring its rule to chaos in Gaza. Now it is just seen as evil.
